Engineering notes
How TETHERÆ is built.
Notes on the engineering behind the product: the decisions worth explaining, and what they were weighed against.
Choosing a relay, and moving one mid-session
How a node is assigned at sign-in, why the address is never frozen into the app, and what has to be true before a live session can be handed to another region.
What the relay cannot see
Precisely which facts a relay in the middle is left with when it cannot decrypt anything it carries, and why that set is as small as it is.
Sleep is the wrong primitive for a machine you want to reach
How Rest mode came about, why it is implemented four separate times, and the platform-specific ways holding a computer awake goes quietly wrong.
A tracker that does not flatter you
Counting a minute of work honestly is a design decision before it is a technical one. What we chose not to measure, and why the number is smaller for it.